


California Scheming

by Malivrag



Category: Deep Purple (Band), Music RPF
Genre: Fate & Destiny, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 06:11:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10565259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malivrag/pseuds/Malivrag
Summary: Ritchie Blackmore leaves Deep Purple, but he doesn't go far. Not far at all. [Mark III-edging into Mark IV era]





	

Ritchie first saw him on one of those blindingly sunny California days; the sun so bright overhead, that his pupils narrowed to pinpricks and everything seemed to be in greyscale. Men, women, buildings, all drawn in pencil.

There was a slender young fellow sitting cross-legged in the street. He was the only thing in resolute color; the streaks of purple and blue and green in his hair would not be faded out. Ritchie would've taken him for a beggar, were it not for the guitar in his lap. Might have taken him for a beggar regardless, but for the absence of the ever-present cap, upside down and waiting to be filled with coins, that marked all beggars.

He had looked up at him, and Ritchie had looked down right back. He had thought to be recognized, but the street gypsy's face betrayed nothing but laughing good humor. A smile blossomed on his mouth; many nations mixed in his features.

"Fancy yourself a guitar player?" Ritchie asked him.

His fingers danced on the streets, coaxing out the most divine sounds. Instantly, Ritchie was pierced through, as though clapped in the iron maiden.

"I'm just here to share with everyone," said the stranger. He had a nasally American voice.

"Share what?"

A shrug. "Whatever I got to share."

Ritchie barely hears him; all he can hear is the music, sweet music, and he was wrong, he has seen this young man before. Not long before, in living color on television, playing with a band -- The James Gang. Ritchie had been enraptured by him then. How he'd come to sit here and strum his guitar on the streets of Los Angeles was beyond him.

"It's just -- man, I love seein' 'em all. Anyone and everyone. The faces, hands, even the click of their steps as they walk by me. That's what brought me here. That moment of connection with everybody that walks by. I can't ask 'em all for their names, so sometimes I dream up new ones." His eyes slid closed as though savoring his words. "You can't imagine the things I dream."

The driver of his limousine was impatient. He'd been standing there by the curb, holding the door open, for more than three minutes. There's somewhere he ought to be. Ritchie said, "Join me in the car."

"I'd love to, man," said the stranger. He looked genuinely grateful. "But you and me, we're not going the same way."

No, we're not, thought Ritchie. He got into the car, almost unimaginably dim and dull after the riotous brilliance of the outside. The door slammed shut.

As they pulled away, Ritchie kept an eye on the young guitar player still sitting on the sidewalk. "Who was that you were talking to?" asked David, who was sitting beside him. He was holding a cologne-soaked handkerchief to his face.

Ritchie didn't regret any of the choices he's made. He was exacting and merciless in all aspects of his personal and professional life. But he did, sometimes, think that had he been a kinder man he would have left David in that little clothing shop in Yorkshire. He was out of his element. He was sure to get hurt.

Had he been a kinder man, Ritchie might have regretted it.

"Don't think of him," Ritchie warned David. "If you don't think of him, perhaps he'll not manifest himself in our lives after all."

"Whatever are you on about?"

There are forces at work in the universe, unseen things, cogs and gears that turn and align just so, and it was not a coincidence that Ritchie had glimpsed this young street gypsy once, twice, this young rock 'n roller who's as doomed as the princes in the old fairy stories, the ones who's heart's blood bleeds them out when pierced by the enchanted thorns. He was going to bring such beauty and mystery and misery into their lives.

"Don't ask me again, David," said Ritchie. Don't ask, for your own sake. Put your energies into anything else. Don't think of him. Don't ask his name. He'll come into your life if you do.

But things were already set in motion. Ritchie quit Deep Purple soon afterward, expecting it to crumble without him. He thought if he did, he would surely avert this heartache. How could the young guitar player come into their lives without a band to join?

Unexpectedly, the others chose to go on without him -- a profane decision that sealed Deep Purple's and Tommy Bolin's fates.

Ritchie quit, but he didn't go far. He didn't like the thought of any of them getting too comfortable without him. He liked dropping in on his erstwhile bandmates; putting them on the spot, seeing how they'd react. He knew as soon as Tommy joined the band, so Ritchie took himself down to Glenn's mansion and walked right in the door.

It was noon, too early for rock stars to be awake. A nude girl was swimming in the pool. Her hair billowed behind her in the water, her bare legs scissor-kicking her from one end of the pool to the other. When she popped her head out of the water and saw him, she let out a little cry, splashed out of the pool, grabbed her towel, and ran into the pool house.

Ritchie ignored her, following his nose inside the mansion. It was bare; no furniture, no decorations, not even curtains on the wide windows. He saw what he first took for a heap of clothing, but upon closer inspection, proved to be the sleeping place of two princes.

Their faces framed by their long hair, naked but for the jewelry adorning their necks, they slumbered so soundly they might well have been enchanted to sleep for a thousand years. Near to them lay a mirror, carelessly discarded. They looked very alike, Ritchie thought, but so do vodka and water, and vodka burns and water quenches.

Glenn lay curled, his face tucked beneath Tommy's chin. He possessed a peculiar magic of his own, did Glenn. Not one that Ritchie was susceptible to, but yet, there it was. His face was slack and he looked very young. He'll not die young; despite all his best efforts, Glenn would live to a ripe old age, that one.

The other, Tommy, the street gypsy, was altogether another story. He was made more beautiful by how utterly doomed he was. He was fragrant as Arabia, and Ritchie stood so near he could see the little crease in each of his bronzed nipples. He slept resplendent, at ease in the manner of a man who has discovered newfound vistas of love. It must've been very sudden, Ritchie thought, for both of them. He imagined a shot to the heart, a cupid's arrow. Who succumbed first? It must've been Glenn.

A shaft of light fell across them; Tommy stirred a bit as it passed over his eyelids. The front door had opened. Ritchie looked up to see David standing in the doorway.

David looked upon them, glanced at Ritchie, then back to the sleeping pair. He blinked rapidly. Without a word, he turned and went up the stairs.

Ritchie followed after him, finding David standing on the balcony overlooking the pool. Perhaps he was thinking of jumping; pure melodrama.

"You knew this would happen, didn't you?" David asked. "I don't know how you knew, but you did. Why didn't you warn us? Why didn't you warn me?"

"You would not have believed me," Ritchie said, coming to stand beside him. "Besides, it's hardly in my nature."

David choked. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. "I love him so much."

"You'll have many years to know and love Glenn," said Ritchie in an uncharacteristic moment of benevolence. He wasn't quite sure why he wanted to console David at all. Perhaps, in some small way, in a hidden corner of himself where light found it's way in, he felt responsible. "Glenn will have a very little time with Tommy. Don't begrudge him even that."

David looked at him with tears in his eyelashes. For the first time, Ritchie found him striking. He'd never been handsome before this moment, till he was tempered with heartbreak.

"If there was a way to change our fates, would you tell me how?" David asked him.

"If I knew how, do you think I'd waste such knowledge on something so small and petty?" Ritchie snapped.

"You're impossible, Blackmore," David said woefully. "I can't believe I believed you, even for a moment. Your dusty old books and occult nonsense. It's not -- not --"

"You'll have your part to play in all this," Ritchie told him. "Some might say, you'll be the great hero of this tale."

"But not the romantic hero," murmured David, laying his head upon the balcony.

"You'll die of a broken heart for some bass player?" Ritchie wrinkled his nose. "Have more dignity than that."

"Who better? Eh?" David was going a little wild with grief, throwing his head back, tearing at his shirt. He flung his sunglasses into the pool, where they sank into the water, their lenses reflecting back blinding rays of light. "Who should I be heartbroken over? If not Glenn, then who? Tell me! All-knowing, all-seeing Ricardo! Who? You?"

Something hung between them. It stretched taut and snapped.

David's eyes went flinty. "Oh. I see."

"Did you think this would never happen?" Ritchie took him by the hand, his nails cutting into David's wrist.

"My broken heart? Or you taking advantage of it?" David asked, but yet he allowed Ritchie to lead him inside.

"I'll leave you better for the experience," Ritchie promised him. There was nowhere to make love, no bed, not even a chaise lounge. They lay upon the floor and made a nest of their clothes, just as had the two princes slumbering away below them.

David shed his clothes, then took each and every ring from his fingers. He unclasped his watch and lay it beside the rings. His necklace soon followed.

Ritchie watched him hungrily. He pounced. "Time to skin this rabbit!"

David's eyes, which had at last become luminous with pain, caught him and held him fast. They said: If this is fate, then have me. Eat me, drink me. And from this and every day forward, choke on my memory, and at night, may the sickle moon cut you deep if you dare to dream about me.

And after, it was Ritchie who lay there and mourned, and let hot tears spill from the corners of his eyes, for he'd tasted of paradise only after the garden's gates had slammed shut.


End file.
